Under His Suit (Love Under Lockdown Book 16)

by Jamie Knight

  “You look me in the eyes, Harlem Dawes,” Jude demanded.

  “Oh, just Harlem,” he chuckled, “Harlem’s good. Familiar. Friendly. Very New York-like. Perhaps I should change it from Harlan to Harlem.”

  “Tell me you didn’t tamper with her girlhood,” Jude demanded. “Look me in the eyes like a man.”

  “On my honor as a gentleman, I promise I have only the best of intentions toward Ms. Stadler,” Harlan warbled humorously while realizing he actually felt that, exactly. “I also want to assure you that your friend will be appropriately compensated for her work here. The account brought in 700K. I’m going to see that Victoria gets a significant sum. I can make that work, right, Barry?”

  “I’ll address that later. Let me ask some questions. How long have you known Victoria Stadler?” Meyerwitz asked Jude.

  “My whole entire life,” Jude exaggerated.

  “And what, may I ask, is your relationship to her?” the lawyer continued.

  “We were to be engaged, before she broke things off with me.”

  “Nice. Good for you,” Meyerwitz said, “How much do you know about what Ms. Stadler did at NextThing.Net?

  “I know she did that iGo thing. Everybody knows it,” he growled at the small image of the lawyer on the screen.

  “Did Victoria Stadler put you up to this and promise you money?”

  “What the fuck is wrong it you!?” He grabbed the tablet and flung it against the wall, as the security men grabbed him, smashed his face on the table and tried cuffing his hands behind his back.

  Harlan approached the struggling young man.

  “That last question really threw me too, Buddy. But this is not the best time to get involved with the justice system in our country. I’d straighten up if I were you,” Harlan advised then walked out.

  Back in his office, Harlan was speaking with Barry Meyerwitz, the screen of his tablet cracked and flickering.

  “I’m not trying to run your life, Harlan. You’ve been in quarantine. Locked up. Take some time, is all I’m saying. We don't want any press, right? Lay low. You’ve been tested. Go visit your mother. Do something. Buy a car. See if it blows over by the weekend at least,” the lawyer advised.

  Seeing Jude on the ground crying out to her for help was difficult for Tory to endure. The stresses and horror of the pandemic seemed to have worn civility away from so many. She wondered what she would say to Jude’s parents, or her own, for that matter, now that her little “secret” relationship was clearly out. It seemed that all of a sudden, no part of her previous life seemed viable at all.

  Tory truly worried about Jude, for his own sake. She also had Harlan to consider. She didn’t want to scandalize him or NextThing.Net. She didn't want media coverage that could possibly cast aspersion on the design contest she’d won or the work she had just performed for iGo.

  How unraveled Jude had become did make her wonder if he was right. Harlan was no virgin. She imagined a squadron of women at an airport waiting, their emotional baggage all having a bit of Harlan tucked in a dark corner.

  What if it was just one of those things that happened in confinement, never to be repeated or spoken of in the real world? she’d mused grimly.

  Earlier in the evening, she’s tried Harlan’s phone but got no answer. She had called Ms. Kaminski and asked where Harlan was.

  There was a brief pause before she’d answered, “He went to buy a car... for his mother,” in a tone that didn’t sound very convincing.

  At the end of the meeting, Jude had given, walking out with the promise that the cops wouldn’t be called. And Harlan was still meeting privately with his lawyer.

  At first, Tory wandered around, waiting for him. The NextThing.Net offices and the design studio were partially staffed. The cliques and klatches made the environment seem suddenly alien and somehow colder despite the number of people around.

  She decided to go back to her hotel room. Waiting for Tory there was a check that Ms. Kaminski had dropped off, that represented her compensation from her work for iGo was tremendous. Now she had enough money to go anywhere and start any kind of life she wanted. Adolescent dreams of settling down with Jude seemed almost ridiculous when faced with the funds and possibilities.

  And yet she still wanted to find a way to make it work with Harlan. She couldn’t believe that he was still a womanizer. There was definitely something special between them. Still, she needed him to show her that he felt it, too.

  Gazing dreamily at the bright Mondrian prints in her little room, she smiled, then teared up a moment later. Maybe it was time to go home, she thought. Even though she knew she would never go back with Jude, perhaps Jude would leave the city and his issues with Harlan alone, now that he realized they were certainly over, with no hope of ever getting back together.

  She started to pack her things. It didn't take long. In jeans and a sweater, she rolled her small carry-on bag down the hall to Mahira’s door and knocked.

  Mahira was not in her room. Around dinner time, she could be in the cafeteria. Not interested in seeing any other people, Tory pulled her luggage to the elevator instead and put on her mask.

  Inside the elevator, she was about to press the button for the lobby, but instead she waved a red card Harlan had given her over the sensor and was carried up to his lounge. The sunset streaming in made it seem lonely and wasted when she was there alone in the modern minimal space.

  From her pocket she took the folded check for $200,000.00 and tucked it under the charging dock of his phone on the entertainment center, before climbing back up the four steps to the elevator. An hour later she sat in a practically empty car as the AirTrain whisked her to JFK.

  ***

  The chopper was over Connecticut when Harlan got the call from Ms. Kalinski about Tory leaving. He tried her phone but got no answer.

  The situation with Jude Coleman did bother him slightly. She’s the kind of girl who understands Sunday dinner, he said to himself. Maybe she was too good for an older former playboy and she clearly got a lot of attention from younger men without bad reputations.

  Perhaps Barry was right, and he should leave the situation alone. And yet something wouldn’t let him. It wasn’t just his dick. It was his heart, too.

  Arriving at the Canal Street Heliport in Stamford, Harlan rode an Uber Black to his mother’s house. Kendrick, his mother’s butler, came to the door and took Harlan’s small bag.

  “The regular room, Sir?” Kendrick droned.

  “That’s fine,” Harlan said.

  Hearing her Bossa Nova music echoing in the living room, Harlan knew where to find his mother. When he walked in the room, he was overcome. Considering herself an artist after Harlan’s father passed away, his mother had spent her quarantine time making dozens of colorful pastels, with which she’d lined one entire wall of the living room, turning it into a psychedelic space, with boxes of pastels and sketches all over the coffee table and sectional sofa.

  “What a Mother’s Day surprise!” Mrs. Dawes threw her arms around her son and looked at him.

  “You look healthy. You want something? Kendrick!” She called out.

  “No, no. I can get my own whatever. Don’t bother him,” Harlan pleaded, yet Kendrick appeared at the door momentarily.

  “Yes, Mom,” he offered.

  “Get Harlan something,” Mrs. Dawes ordered.

  Feeling guilty about making the old character get out of his chair, Harlan asked for a cognac.

  “And put it in a regular glass, okay?!” Harlan called after him.

  Then he dropped down on a clear spot on the sectional and gazed at his mother’s work.

  “You seem distracted, Harley,” his mom noticed.

  “I may have met someone,” he said distantly.

  “Not another one of those tall stupid girls who are afraid of bread, I hope,” his mother teased.

  “Ha, very funny. I think you’d hit it off. She’s a type of artist, herself. She knows her primary colors from her secondar
ies,” Harlan remarked, a bittersweet tone in his tone.

  “So, what’s the long face for?” his mother asked, absently picking up a small plastic tub of gesso to see if it was empty or not.

  “I just don’t know. There was a thing. Someone she used to like. He came to my business. Made a scene. I could tell it upset her,” he said, thinking out loud.

  “Why don’t you call her?” his mother asked, “and try to straighten it all out? I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding.”

  “I tried earlier.”

  “Well. Do it again,” she said patiently, in that motherly way of hers, as if referring to trying to ride a bike or tie a shoelace.

  “I’m not ready to hear about whatever she chose to do just yet,” he said. “She could do almost anything she wants. She’s got enough money to get started somewhere. She has job offers coming at her every day from all over. She’s gonna be fine no matter what she does.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m going up to have a shower and get some sleep. I’m getting an electric car for you in the morning. I found one but I need to finalize the deal and pick it up. I need to be well rested to deal with car salesmen. Goodnight, Mom.”

  He pecked her on the cheek and went toward the stairs.

  “You are staying for dinner Sunday, right?” she called after him.

  “A Sunday dinner? Of course I am.”

  Chapter 17

  Madison, Wisconsin seemed smaller to Tory when she returned after her time in New York City. Her house and her room seem unreasonably small as well, after living in all the space of NextThing.Net’s hotel headquarters when they had been practically empty.

  When Jude heard that Tory had come back to Madison, he had called her. Jude seemed alright at home until hearing about how she had left the iGo money behind. He’d launched a rant about the evils of big business and big businessmen and the surrender of freedoms the nationwide lockdowns had caused and about how she should be clinging to that cash in the perilous era to come.

  When Jude told her that he was going off to join the anti-lockdown protests in Michigan, Tory had closed her eyes and ended the call. Her mother was off with a group of local women who were bringing meals to the quarantined elderly in the area. Her father was in the garage sipping beers and watching his old TV, which was too tremendous a piece of furniture for him to get rid of.

  Needing to be outdoors, Tory put on one of the masks from NextThing.Net and walked the thirty minutes over to her college to see if Bascom Hall, at the center of the University of Wisconsin’s campus, was open. She had no real agenda at Bascom Hall but welcomed the chance just to walk around the familiar Gothic style buildings where she had spent so much of her time.

  On the way back, she planned to stop in the supermarket to pick up a few things to prepare for dinner, since it was Mother’s Day.

  She was trying to forget about the events of the past and focus on the future. But it was a lot harder than she’d imagined. All she kept thinking about was Harlan.

  ***

  Monday morning, Harlan was feeling numb as the chopper slowly descended over the heliport atop the suite of offices and studios that made up NextThing.Net. Mother’s Day had been nice, quiet. His sister, Jane, had shown up with her new husband, a Las Vegas restaurateur, who just opened a new location a month before the COVID-19 Pandemic and was not very optimistic despite the restaurant’s plans to open even more branches in nearby California.

  When Jane asked him about who he was seeing, it was clear that his mother had filled her in on every detail she had managed to extricate from him about Tory, during a few brief sessions in the kitchen.

  When Jane had asked where Tory was, Harlan just smiled and said, “She’s probably at her mother’s table tonight, just like you.”

  With cities opening and commerce learning to cope, new work was coming in. The big network accounts, especially. Harlan spent the day on his Bluetooth headset fielding calls while working out in the gym.

  It was dusk before he went up to the lounge to try relaxing a bit and clearing his head. When he put his phone in its base and prompted Flamma Flamma by Nicholas Lens, he noticed the folded check sticking out from beneath the unit and slowly took it up in his hand and unfolded it.

  He started to laugh out loud when he realized that Tory didn’t take the check. He took up the phone again and called Barry Meyerwitz. Looking worried, his face appeared on the phone’s screen and then bounced to the TV as Harlan turned it on.

  “So, what’s the status?” his lawyer asked.

  “She didn't take the check, Barry,”

  “Not enough? What? She wants more?”

  “Don't you see what this means?”

  “No.”

  “She’s not off starting a new life somewhere,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I, uh...”

  “Who's the lawyer?” Barry prompted him.

  “I know you’re the lawyer, Mr. Mouthpiece, but I think it means something. She didn't have to leave it here for me to find. She could have ripped it up, given it to Jillian. Payroll is open. She could have done anything!”

  “As your lawyer, I advise you to leave this situation alone. Do the right thing for a change.”

  “Yeah, Barry. You’re right. The right thing. I should just do the right thing.”

  He hung up, deciding to just do that, even though he knew it wasn’t what Barry had meant.

  ***

  In their kitchen, Victoria and her mother, Linda, cooked. Potatoes were boiling to be mashed. Her mother battered and breaded chicken parts as Tory carefully sank the pieces in the hot oil to fry, then placed the cooked meat on a plate covered in paper towels to blot up excess oil.

  Not having a genuine plan, she was content to help her mom and didn’t mind the idea of spending time with her and the elders of her community who had always been there for her growing up.

  Her mother had known that the crisis in the country had surely changed Tory. She was proud to see her holding it together instead of struggling and complaining about petty personal problems in the midst of the pandemic like so many young people she saw on the news. She was a levelheaded girl who always seemed to find the time to hear another’s problems before considering or even airing her own.

  Having heard from the Colemans about Jude breaking quarantine and having had to listen to his concerns several times on the phone, before and after the fact, her mother knew everything. She saw Victoria practically hovering about the house as she had years ago like a child on Christmas Eve, aglow with the belief that there might still be magic in the world.

  She knew her daughter was a woman in love.

  The roar of a new Ducati’s engine on her hometown street as the motorcycle passed by outside was as alien to Tory as the sleek looking highly polished black cycle she saw turning around at the end of her block. Tory had absent-mindedly walked out the kitchen door and into the street in an apron without saying a word.

  She ran back into the kitchen but didn't see her mother.

  “Mom!” she called out.

  Her mother came from the foyer, with Tory’s light blue suede jacket in hand.

  “I….” she started, smiling, “I’m, I need to talk to someone,” she said, slipping out of the apron.

  The motorcycle had stopped outside, its engine purring in neutral.

  “I know. Just let me know when you get to wherever it is you’re going,” her mother remarked, sounding quite folksy.

  “I love you, Mom,” Tory whispered as they hugged.

  Outside, Harlan sat on his newest toy, purchased at the closest dealership to the airport, looking at his phone.

  “What are you doing out here on that thing?” she called out loudly, so that she would be heard over the motor as she approached.

  “I’ve got this great new app. It lets you make plans virtually or in real life with someone, for today, for tomorrow and forever. They called it E-LOPE. Wanna try it out, with me?” Harlan s
uggested, looking directly into her eyes.

  She straddled the vibrating machine between his legs facing him and said, “I bet the icon is black on black on black on-”

  They kissed for the longest time.

  Epilogue

  In the end, Tory hadn’t been able to actually elope with Harlan, because she knew her parents would be crushed if they weren’t at the wedding. But he had gotten down on one knee with a shiny diamond ring and proposed to her.

  “I love you,” he’d said. “And I know I always will. Just don’t run off on me again.”

  “I won’t,” she’d promised him, shaking her head. “I just got confused. You were talking to the lawyer, and then Ms. Kalinski claimed that when I had tried to call you earlier, you were buying some car for your mom, and it didn’t sound very realistic…”

  “Come on,” he’d said, laughing. “Why not? It was about to be Mother’s Day, after all. Do you think you’re the only person who has a great relationship with your mom?”

  “No,” she’d said quickly, feeling guilty for doubting him. “But it was more her tone, as if she was hesitant to tell me.”

  “Well, she’s not supposed to tell people what I’m out doing,” he said. “So, she probably didn’t want to get in trouble by disclosing my whereabouts! But you know Ms. Kalinski. She does what she wants. And she knows we are meant to be?”

  “We sure are,” she’d said, kissing him. “I love you and I will never run off like that again.”

  So now had just gotten married at her hometown church, because it was six months since the quarantine and everything had gotten a lot better. His mom and sister were there, as were her parents.

  Even Mahiri had flown in for the celebrations. She had initially been upset with Tory for leaving without saying goodbye, but she eventually came around, and was only happy for her friend. The ceremony was beautiful as the couple exchanged their vows, and the reception was amazing as everyone danced and enjoyed an open bar.